The present invention relates to containers that are designed to hold pills, candy, or other tablet shaped items for dispensing. More specifically, the present invention is a novel replacement for the traditional cap typically placed on such containers. The new cap allows a user to dispense a single pill, candy piece, tablet, capsule, nut, bolt and other small item or part. As used herein, the word “pill” is used to generally designate any of the previously listed items or any small part to be dispensed as a single unit.
With regard to pill bottles, the current traditional design consists of a bottle with a closed base and a cap covering an opening at its top. It is typical that the cap is connected to the bottle via screw threads or is a snap fit. For a user to obtain a pill from the bottle the cap must first be removed by unscrewing or unsnapping it, and then pills are usually poured into the free hand or onto a table top or suitable open surface where a single unit is selected. The rest are then placed back into the bottle and the cap is then placed back on the bottle by screwing it to or snapping over the opening.
As the population of the world grows and people live longer, there is an ever increasing aging population. With old age come many dexterity related ailments such as arthritis and loss of strength. Often times, the opening of a traditional pill bottle can be a difficult task for an aging population that may consume more pills or tablets than any other segment of the population. It is this segment of the population that may benefit most from a simple ergonomic pill dispenser that can be easily used, even with only one hand. It would be even more beneficial if the pill dispenser enabled the user to dispense only a single pill from the bottle with each actuation.
This task of dispensing a pill is not only performed by aging individuals but by all other age groups totaling millions of people around the world. Further, this task is sometimes performed several times a day and while it may be common and considered routine, it is clear that the current traditional pill bottle cap design is efficient for the containment of pills but not efficient for the dispensing of pills. In the case of an industrial or production line application where numerous dispensing operations are required, typical dispensing bottles may result in a loss of productivity or may cause ergonomic issues. There are other examples where the contents of the bottle are hazardous for a person to touch and dispensing the contents requires the user to wear protective gear such as gloves because the container provides no other means of safe dispensing.
While other designs have demonstrated ways of accomplishing the task of easily dispensing a single pill from a pill bottle, they have not addressed the complicated task of aligning non-spherical pills or odd shaped items to facilitate reliable and controlled dispensing in a simple user friendly design. As indicated above, while the container and dispensing cap assembly described herein can be used for dispensing various different items, for simplicity the dispensing cap and bottle is illustrated by reference to a single application, the dispensing of a pill shaped object. However, one skilled in the art will recognize that applications for use of the described product are not so limited and the product can be used to dispense a single unit of numerous different items.